With feminine strategy she had induced James to take her rifle apart, then telling him that she would put it together she filled the breech and the barrel with cotton wool and threw the cartridge under the barn! As the piece was a safety notch, the subsequent military movements were executed with a light heart; the General's command to "fall in" was received with as light a heart as an invitation to "take a chair."
But a problem to the full as interesting as present arms was absorbing May's thoughts as she sewed: Philip, and how to square accounts with him.
Philip now made daily visits to the Haines' mansion, and it often seemed to May that he came solely to bully and tease her. Philip thought the girl in knickerbockers a very timorous lad; he, therefore, put forth all his talent for jeering and sneering, with unhappy result.
"He's spoiling for a fight," May said to herself, with unerring accuracy. "But I should be ashamed to come to blows with a boy, although I know he's so much of a coward that he would be more scared than I if we did have a little set-to. I wonder what Gay would do? But I know; he'd take some of Philip's swagger out of him. Still, I'm not Gay, if I am wearing his clothes."
Now, as it may be seen, May was not an Amazon nor a miniature virago. She knew a little about boxing; she had been a pupil of Uncle George, who had been a student at Harvard College, where he had learned a great deal about sports, and it is probable that had she overcome her dislike to fighting she would have taught Philip a wholesome lesson. She was to teach him one in another and a better way, but she did not know it, and as she sewed she wrestled with her problem and could not solve it.
While May sat there on the fragrant hay, the afternoon sunshine streaming in upon her, Philip made his appearance, and so unexpectedly that she had not time to whisk the hat out of sight.
"Are you sewing?" cried Philip, with a loud laugh.
"Yes," May answered, with a deep blush.